A few popular search engines are: www.google.com, www.yahoo.com, and www.altavista.com.

When you visit a search engine, you type in keywords or key phrases that you would like information about.

Sometimes, you want to make sure that a search engine finds pages that have all the words you enter, not just some of them. The + symbol lets you do this.

For example, imagine you want to find pages that have references to both Jesus Christ and Resurrection on the same page. You could search this way:

+Jesus Christ +resurrection

Only pages that contain both words would appear in your results. The + symbol is especially helpful when you do a search and then find yourself overwhelmed with information.

Sometimes, you want a search engine to find pages that have one word on them but not another word. The - symbol lets you do this.

For example, imagine you want information about Jesus Christ but don't want to be overwhelmed by pages relating to the resurrection. You could search this way:

Jesus Christ -resurrection

That tells the search engine to find pages that mention "Jesus Christ" and then to remove any of them that also mention "resurrection." In general, the - symbol is helpful for focusing results when you get too many that are unrelated to your topic. Simply begin subtracting terms you know are not of interest, and you should get better results.